offseason notes
- I got us invited to the state's preeminent girls tennis team tournament next April. Much like last year's tournament, I'm less concerned about us going down there and winning a lot, and rather, giving the girls exposure to seeing much better teams.
We proved last year that we can pretty much hang with most 6A/5A programs, and this team is mostly that team minus all of our senior depth, I think we're going to be able to backfill most of those losses (there's no replacing our captain) but we're just going to struggle with depth. We haven't been able to convince any of the tall volleyball players to try tennis, it usually only worked a few years ago because they had friends on the team.
Tiebreakers
I was talking to someone about my team's record in tiebreakers, because I felt like we didn't lose them very much. I got curious -- and was waiting for my car during an oil change -- and went back and counted.
Counting all of my years coaching in the state (so 5 years)
Quote:
Tiebreakers: 20-9
3 set matches: 26-14
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When you break it down, the most impressive parts of those numbers are:
My current girls team in 4 years/3 seasons are 14-2 in tiebreakers. The two losses were 3rd set tiebreaker post-season losses (one in districts, one at state) and 15-10 in 3-set matches.
Not surprisingly, the 3-setters are almost always bottom of the lineup doubles pairings (3rd/4th doubles) though my first season our top doubles pairing had a penchant for dragging matches out and playing teams beneath them close.
The boys team I coached for one season went 4-10-1, but was somehow 11-4 in 3rd set matches. I'm extremely proud of that record, because we stole more than a few matches that way, and even in losses, had some where we managed to get closer than we had any business getting with that roster that I patched together with scotch tape.
Wyoming aftermath
The Wyoming team indeed got a local coach, a young guy who came over from another school from a different part of the state where he'd been an assistant coach. It'll be great for him and if he sticks with it, he'll end up a successful coach because he got a state champion in his first year on the job.
Girls won state, boys finished 2nd. We did a lot of harder work last year, and in the off-season, there were two parents who basically coached the team with the willing kids and they got themselves ready to go for the year.
There's no doubt having a local person who is in his 20s and had been in their situation before was probably very helpful for those kids (and probably the parents) and it probably helped too that we'd deal with all of the roster shenanigans during my time, so he didn't really have to do a lot with the lineup.
The only things I'll claim credit for are:
- Letting the 8th grade hotshots practice with varsity, all 3 made varsity as doubles players and 2 won state titles (the other one finished 3rd)
- The lineup was mostly already set for him, he didn't have to do much besides replace the seniors from last year with better 9th graders and made a few modest tweaks to the structure -- stuff we'd talked about doing at the end of last year anyway.
The Wyoming numbers for tiebreakers in one season aren't as good (4-11 in tiebreakers / 15-20 in 3-set matches) but that's because tennis there was so variable and it's overly skewed by the boys team playing in TWENTY NINE 3-set matches last year (girls were 3-3 in them), but I used a lot of the same methods...it's just harder until you know your kids to be able to drag them out of close matches with changeover coaching tbh. Same deal here though, 3rd doubles was often the culprit in playing crazy 3 setters. Not to mention that state uses ad-scoring for regular season matches, which is will never not be insane to me.
Also, I'd never dealt with coaching two teams at the same time and it's for sure a lot of context switching on the fly.